This video looks at how prohibitionist law enforcement drug policies negatively impact development and the environment. And we have the pleasure of talking to Diego García-Devis from the Open Society Foundations in New York. Hello Diego Hello Jennifer Could you kindly just introduce yourself please. My name is Diego García and I work within the drug policy program of the Open Society Foundations, where we try to reform the regulatory frameworks of drug policy which we see as harmful to susceptible people. What effect do prohibitionist policies have on the development and the livelihood of populations? The first thing you need to take into account Jennifer is the fact that drug policies and regulatory frameworks which regulate the production and supply of drugs are immediately addressed from a wrong perspective, the perspective of criminal law, meaning that they address a phenomenon which is seen as social, of health, of economic development, under a criminal perspective while it should be our last resort to tackle these phenomenons. We are putting in the hands of security, of the police and often of the army the responsibility to deal with these phenomenon which are linked to poverty, to social marginalisation. The prohibitionist policy has had direct effects on susceptible populations, on those that we consider as the most vulnerable link in the drug production chain whether it is producers or users. If we take the example of Latin America, coca producers are the poorest farmers. They live in places where, for instance, multidimensional poverty reaches 90%: coca growing is the only way to receive or access a salary. If, for instance, we think about women who are heads of family, they meet difficulties in entering the labour market. It is mostly them who carry drugs: we call them mules because they carry drugs inside their body. They are the ones incarcerated. If we now take a look at the more problematic population of drug users who live in the street, these are populations coming from poor settings in cities or urban areas. In other words, prohibition stopped us accessing social inclusion programs, addressing in a comprehensive manner poverty issues, and it gave the priority to the use of strength and militarisation as if it was the only way to address these issues. In what ways do prohibitionist drug policies negatively impact the environment? What is happening with environment is similar to what is happening with poverty, in so far as it is the police and the army who deal with these issues. We have seen how, in the coca or poppy eradication process for instance, illicit crops move to protected areas or deeper forested areas which lead to deforestation and wildlife movements. Each time there is an eradication act, we observe that the agricultural frontier moves and spreads. We call this phenomenon the "balloon effect": if we put pressure on a community growing coca or poppy this community will move to a deeper forested area, deforest this area and plant coca or poppy. With eradication process using glyphosate, water sources are being contaminated but also the grounds and the endemic wildlife of these areas is affected. Here is for eradication. But, there is one element which does not appear in the media and it is not quite clear in the way trafficking is addressed to. For instance, traffickers hide their landing strips in forest areas, in the most remote areas, which induce a deforestation in regions which should be protected. This leads, and we mainly saw that in Central America, to another type of illicit economy which takes benefits from the existence of these landing strips to deal in wood, animals and to expand mining. We can then observe a chain of relationships between cocaine production in Latin America for instance and other illicit economies such as illegal gold mining or wood and animal trading. Thank you for all of your contribution and points that are really important to take into consideration when looking at prohibitionist drug policies Thank you Jennifer.